Kardashev Effect
by EgotisticalIndustries
Summary: By the time Humanity discovered eezo, they didn't need it. Watch and see as the synthetic offspring of humanity use entire solar systems as raw materials, alienate the Council, and curbstomp the Reapers. (REAPERS DEAD, SHOOT IDEAS FOR AN ACTUAL THREAT AT ME PLEASE!)
1. Chapter 1

Kardashev Effect

Author's Note: This is my first fic, hopefully I don't screw it up _too_ badly. This story is highly AU from canon as you shall soon see. Oh, and I don't own Mass Effect either. I also don't own Space X or General Fusion, which are, by the way, real companies. Lastly I'm stretching out the timeline a bit, humanity has about 500 years before 1st contact.

Chapter 1: point of divergence

2016a: Space X's dragon v2 capsule successfully brings crew to the international space station, as the craft is entirely reusable it is ready to go again in about an hour.

2016b: a small scale warp test reveals that they have in fact managed to produce miniscule distortions in space-time. The effect is however too small to be useful at the moment.

2017: General Fusion succeeds in developing magnetized target fusion for generating electricity, but due to the way it works it is unable to be used as a fusion torch engine.

2019: Space X has finally gotten people to SHUT UP about their use of nuclear thermal rockets for their new launch vehicle.

2020: The energy crisis is officially declared solved, though certain Middle Eastern countries are rapidly going into revolt as their income from fossil fuels dries up.

2026: Cybernetic prosthetics are developed which are actually better than the limbs they are replacing.

2024: Arabia needs to be invaded _again_ to keep a massive civil war from breaking out.

2030: The 18 year long Syrian Bloodbath finally comes to an end when a random asteroid that the scientific community missed annihilates the entire country.

2034: _Destiny_, the first O'Neill cylinder is completed in the asteroid belt. It is an entirely self-sufficient city that later declares itself capitol of the newly formed Belt republic. As getting out there still takes about a month at best, this claim is uncontested.

2042: Purely magnetic confinement fusion is developed, allowing for the development of fusion torch engines, in-system travel times are reduced greatly.

2056: A breakthrough in AI research occurs entirely by accident as a new high-resolution brain scanner produces a real-time simulation of the subject's entire brain. Sadly, the new AI went insane due to the lack of _any_ outside stimulus.

2060: Stellar Lifting technology is developed for the purposes of creating millions of habitats to ease the overpopulation on earth. It works by magnetically ripping plasma out of the sun, which actually makes it last longer. This plasma is converted to heavier elements through the usage of nuclear fusion.

2062: A gradual uploading process is developed that turns the subject into an AI over the course of a week. It works by slowly converting layers of brain tissue into a nanotech computing substrate running a partial brain simulation, which stimulates the remaining organic tissue as if the brain were still whole, and applies stimulus to the partial simulation in much the same way as the brain is slowly converted. This is to ensure continuity of consciousness (they want to make sure it's really the same person in there). This procedure becomes mandatory for all military personnel.

2063: In a bungled attempt to make the necessary exotic matter to run an Alcubierre 'warp drive' a different type of exotic matter is produced that was found to have an utterly absurd tensile strength, though it isn't rigid in the slightest. This enables the construction of megastructures similar to the one in Larry Niven's _Ringworld _books. Estimated time to completion is 300 years.

2067: Venus and Mercury are completely disassembled for raw materials. (This project had been going for about 30 years, but no-one really paid much attention to it before.)

2073: Advances in intelligence engineering increase the intelligence of all uploaded/AI citizens by an order of magnitude. The 1st singularity has occurred.

2078: The new trans-sapient population gets fed up with the constant 'stupidity' of the organic populace, and forcibly uploads them all.

2081: Industrial antimatter production becomes feasible, but is seen as a 'dead end' technology and ultimately ignored.

2084: A prototype Alcubierre warp drive is tested, though only capable of reaching 1.1 c, it's just a proof-of-concept, the technology obviously has room to improve.

2085: The Prothean ruins on Mars are discovered. The HDI (human derived intelligences) regard eezo as more of a hindrance than a resource, as they are already capable of producing exotic matter with negative mass to get their warp drives to work, and simulations show that relying on eezo would ultimately cripple their technological development, as apparently happened to the Protheans.

2086: The paranoia related to sharing the same fate as the Protheans leads to the ring plans being revised (it will now boast 200 km thick armor and allow the entire solar system to move at FTL speeds.) All the rocky planetoids in-system are used as raw materials (including Earth), dropping estimated time to completion to only 74 years.

2090: An interesting quirk of the Alcubierre warp drive is noted by the 1st extra-solar colonization fleet headed to the Alpha Centauri system. For reasons pertaining to warp torus scale and exotic matter generation rates, bigger ships apparently move faster. As the 5 km long light construction vessel can only move at a few lightyears an hour, while the 30 km heavy freighter is at least an order of magnitude faster. Extrapolating this reveals that a 'ringed' star system should be capable of intergalactic travel.

~BLAH BLAH, 2nd singularity, putting a ring in every HDI system, capable of churning out 1000 warships/hour/system, faster warp, time-skip to 1st contact with Turians, BLAH BLAH!~


	2. Contact

**Chapter 2: 1****st**** contact**

_HDI sphere, coreward periphery_~_1,200 lightyears from sol system._

Jan 23rd, 2498 (HDI calendar)

Defa (chosen nickname), got out of bed. Well, it was really just a pile of code that helped her feel refreshed, but Defa liked to think of it as a bed. After doing this she spared an entire millisecond reading the news (her friends always gently teased her about being slow), and transmitted herself over to the relatively puny 20 km exploratory vessel she was scheduled to be on.

It was just another 'day' at the office, after another 'night' in the luxury simulations on the local Ring.

Defa hurried to unzip herself and get to her position as a backup sensor technician. Being as stupid as a pre-singularity intelligence however briefly, always made Defa a little embarrassed.

Defa managed to get into position just as the ship went to warp. They were going to check a system 1000 lightyears out from the edge of the HDI's sphere of influence which they'd detected some interesting transmissions originating from. Settling in for the agonizingly long 20 hours that the jump was expected to last she chatted with her co-worker Bratr and started playing a rather long strategy simulation with him, that they saved for later when they dropped out of warp right on schedule. As they were aligning for the compensation burn to keep from drifting out of the system Defa rather quickly noted the (unfortunately) eezo-dependant defense fleet orbiting… _a planet_, it figured these poor sods had fallen for the trap, after all, no self-respecting civilization would want to live on one of those after they had the tech to build artificial habitats!

_Meanwhile onboard some random Frigate in the Palaven Defense Fleet._

2157 (Council calendar)

To be completely blunt, this job was BORING! Altus Parnos was waiting around in the Mess Hall of the frigate he was assigned to, looking out the holoprojector/video camera combo that served as a window, when suddenly he saw a small flash of light towards the outer edge of the system. Roughly 0.312 seconds later the alarm klaxons were blaring and someone was screaming into the intercom: AN UNIDENTIFIED SHIP 20KM LONG JUST APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE AT THE EDGE OF THE SYSTEM!

In all fairness the reaction to this unexpected contact was fairly swift by organic standards, what with every ship in the system firing their main guns at the unidentified ship, and their reaction was entirely understandable. Still, Defa was somewhat annoyed that the Turians were so insistent on scratching the ship's paint job (not that it was actually painted). But when a ship is designed to withstand multi-gigaton impacts and still keep ticking, double digit kilotons weren't going to do much more than that. The fact that the ship's armor was 500 meters thick helped a lot.

Primarch Fedorian's office

The Primarch was unsure of what to make of the ship that had appeared at the edge of the system, for one it was 20 km long, indicating that it was extremely advanced, however there was no telltale flare of a kinetic barrier on impact indicating that these… primitives? didn't use eezo. Then a high-resolution scan revealed only very shallow cratering of the ship's hull, and there was of course the matter of HOW this ship had arrived in the system in the first place.

And now the unidentified ship was transmitting unintelligible binary in the AM band. And then the hologram projector activated of its own accord. Floating there was the image of an alien he'd never seen before. The hologram then spoke in _perfect_ Turian: "Sorry about this, but our First Contact protocol consists of ransacking the alien's databases followed by dropping off a copy of our historical archives. I'm going to scram now so bye!" And the hologram projector deactivated once more.

3 (Council Standard) days later

Council chambers

Councilor Tevos began the discussion that would decide the fate of the galaxy with a question; "So, what do we know about these HDI, assuming that they were telling the truth?" Valern responded with "They have the ability to swamp Citadel space with warships larger than the citadel itself, they build megastructures enclosing entire stars as a matter of course, they are practically immortal, and are roughly 200 times smarter than an average sapient."

Sparatus then chimed in with "They also apparently have no compunctions pertaining to the mass… 'Uploading' of organics." Tevos responded "And why would they? It was made quite clear that they view an upload as being fundamentally the same person after the procedure as before." "Maybe we should actually try and get them to join the citadel council through diplomatic means." Valern said. Both Tevos and Sparatus gaped at him briefly before Sparatus calmly asked for Valern to explain his reasoning, which was thus:"We cannot possibly win a war against this race of synthetics without a few things which we simply don't have. The first is knowledge of where HDI space actually is, second we do not possess any weapons capable of inflicting even noticeable damage to what the data has told us is a _civilian vessel, _and finally, the _secondary_ weapons they deploy all have yields in at least the double digit megatons."

With that the intercom system in the room was suddenly hijacked and the HDI currently possessing it (much to the councilor's chagrin) abruptly ended the conversation with "It's not nice to talk about people behind their backs you know."

Uncharted space

Quarian Migrant Fleet scout ship

Aela'Rah vas Defrahnz was valiantly piloting her ship through an uncharted Relay in another (probably futile, she thought to herself) attempt to find a new world for the Quarians to settle on. The **_least likely_** thing she thought would happen would be that she wound up in a system with a massive ring stretching all the way around the local star. She most definitely didn't expect to receive a transmission in _perfect_ Khelish saying "Hello, we wondered when you'd show up."

**Codex: Human Derived Intellects**

The HDI are a race of synthetics with their home system being roughly 2,000 light years rimwards of the Turian home world of Palaven, They are capable of creating mega-structures on the scale of entire solar systems, and have a method of FTL that does not require eezo. The HDI FTL drive works by moving a bubble of space that just so happens to contain the ship they are transporting. This has the net effect of changing the ship's position without changing its velocity, necessitating a long burn with a conventional thruster to avoid drifting out of the target system.

The HDI have also figured out a way to convert matter into energy without antimatter or nuclear processes, the only thing they even use eezo for is their comm buoy network, which, due to them being information, also functions as a mass transit service.

**Author's note:** You may have guessed about this, but the Reapers are going to get flattened. This is really more about how an extremely stagnant society like the council reacts to an extremely rapidly changing society that could squish them instantly, but doesn't particularly feel like it.


	3. Negotiations

**Chapter 3:** negotiations

Quarian Migrant Fleet (liveship Rayya)

Contact officer Kalte presently inhabited a bipedal interface platform. Talking with the Quarians hadn't _officially_ started yet, but he was having a rather interesting conversation with one of the children running around. "Hello Mr. Geth, what are you doing here?" Kalte chuckled internally for all of a nanosecond and responded with "I'm not actually a Geth, though the difference might be hard to see for the uninitiated." The child responded with "Well what are you then?"

Suddenly the conversation was cut short by a notice on a chat thread Kalte was following saying quite simply "_the admirals are ready to begin talks"._ Kalte started to walk away as he ended his conversation with the Quarian girl with a simple "I need to go now". Kalte was dimly aware of the girl following him, but didn't think it was important.

**Author's Note: **I don't trust myself to remember all the Admirals or write them in-character, so I'm skipping the actual conversation and going to the terms decided and what each side thinks of them.

Terms

-The Quarian Species is to receive 1 star system with Ringworld

-HDI will protect said Ringworld from all threats

-The Quarians are to attempt reconciliation with the Geth

Quarian Opinion

The Quarians are, on the whole, grateful for the gift that the HDI have given them. There are however undercurrents of fear, for the gifting of such a large structure indicates that the HDI consider such a thing a minor expenditure of resources at most. Other reasons for apprehension include the fact that someone obviously created the HDI, but there are absolutely no signs of that someone's continued existence.

Human Derived Intelligence Opinion (given in the form of a chat thread)

_Hannah Shepard: I personally approve of getting the Quarians to reconcile with the Geth, but I think we could have just given them an Orbital and been done with it.  
Jack Harper: Think, we can knock out a Ring and be almost guaranteed for the Quarians to reconcile with the Geth, while an Orbital would only have a73% chance of them going along with it.  
Steven Hackett: Shepard does have a point, we can churn out an orbital in just a few months, but making a Ring will take at least 3 years.  
Grd2: We actually aren't giving them a full size ring, we're giving them a rather small one around a neutron star, it's a closed-roof design, so the radiation from it won't present a problem. In addition the system we're giving them is absolutely swamped with eezo since that's where we dump all of the stuff we find, same with all those Mass Relays we don't need._

Council Chambers, Citadel

Sparatus coldly greeted the HDI ambassador with "So, what do you want with us?" The ambassador Ud1N responded with "Not much really, just make the Batarians stop slaving, you can enter these 5 systems in our space without repercussions (at this point those 5 systems lit up on the galaxy map), and we thought you might like to know 2 things." Tevos asked politely "what are those things?" Ud1N answered with "well, the Citadel is one gigantic mass relay for starters." Valern expressed incredulity and asked "and the second?" Ud1N said "There's a bunch of squid-like sapient starships outside the galaxy that exterminate all space-faring life in the galaxy every 50,000 years."

Council Races opinion

The 'big 3' of galactic politics are, to be completely blunt, terrified of the HDI. The reasons for this are simple. Firstly, the HDI have outright stated that they consider organic life inferior. No-one has seen even the slightest hints that the Quarians still exist ever since first contact with the HDI. And finally, they mentioned an extragalactic machine race that exterminates all life in the galaxy every 50,000 years, are they just a scouting force for this race? There's also the fact that HDI warships are 100km long for the _patrol vessels_.

HDI opinion (once again in the form of a chat thread)

_Defa: Well, at least you got them to enforce the slavery ban on the Batarians.  
Ud1N : I doubt it, I checked the records and the Council is completely spineless.  
Tarde: Perhaps we should just go enforce the Council's laws for them.  
Defa: Whatt?  
Ud1N : What would that entail?  
Tarde: Simple, we let them take a specialized platform, which injects uploading nanites into all other slaves it encounters.  
Defa: Though we should probably repatriate them in cloned bodies identical to their original one.  
Ud1N : I like this plan, I'll talk to my superiors about this._

**Author's note:** Some of you are wondering what the HDI are doing with all that extra mass they get from 'eating' planets. You seem to have forgotten that Ring-worlds are huge and take ridiculous amounts of matter to build. This applies even more so if your Ringworld has 200km thick armor like the HDI ones do.

The Batarian war will happen, but for much different reasons then in canon.

The planet Javik was on wound up being dismantled to make the local ring, he was uploaded already, which is why the HDI know about the Reapers. The Conduit just wound up being dumped in the system the Quarians got along with the rest of the Mass relays the HDI found. Javik already told the HDI about the beacon on Eden Prime, which wound up mistakenly being melted down and incorporated into the local star lifting array.

I'm going to be pumping out 1 chapter/day for at least 50 chapters. Hopefully.


	4. The Uploading of Torfan

**Author's Note:** I couldn't find where Batarian space was relative to Sol on the Galaxy Map, so I'm going to fudge it and just say its 34,000 lightyears clockwise from HDI space

**Chapter 4: **The Uploading of Torfan

The HCV Liberation (still warm from the construction line) cruised towards Torfan. The trip would only take a few hours for the 40km long patrol vessel. The plan was simple, blow up the slaver fleet, send in a bunch of the more Gung-Ho HDI in Bipedal Combat Platforms, haul everyone on Torfan into the Liberation's Organic Containment Bay, Upload all the slaves, and delete all the slavers.

Therefore Captain JohnBrown2 was rather bored as several Batarians fired Mass Accelerators at the Liberation during its compensation burn, barely scratching its 3 km of armor. Even as he thought this, point defense lasers 500 meters long roasted 95% of the slaver fleet. Deciding it was safe, the 300 meter diameter shuttles carrying BCPs started the descent towards the moon below. This occurred simultaneously with hacking all the bomb collars on the planet below to render them inert.

Torfan's surface (POV of a random Batarian)

Fetin Gadnass was a humble dock worker, he just helped load and unload cargo. He didn't particularly care whether or not said cargo was sentient or not as long as he got paid. Poor Fetin, compared to the real scum on this planet he didn't deserve to be vaporized by the radiation plume from a conversion drive.

Eramis Soccarok watched the aforementioned scene from a safe distance, she was rather apathetic, being a member of the lowest caste meant she was practically a slave herself. It's not like her life could get any worse. When an obviously alien synthetic came up behind her, she just glanced at it, went back to fixing the leaking pipe she was working on then got electrolasered in the back. Eramis' last thought before blacking out was _"I hope they kill me."_

Shepard POV

After zapping the Batarian woman in the back, I checked the local area for more organics. None were detected, so I sent a request back to the nearest shuttle to send a hauler, before descending into the nearest bunker looking for more targets. What I found in there was absolutely disgusting. There were hundreds of organics in a cage, being treated in a way I wouldn't even treat a bacterium!

Fortunately I managed to restrain myself from outright vaporizing any Batarians I saw after that point. I still upped the power of my electrolaser more than was strictly required however.

2 weeks later, Sol

Eramis was still in awe of the new freedoms she possessed after being uploaded by the HDI, for one, she was now visiting the system that started this whole thing off. She was currently in a simulation of Humanity's old home world, Earth, more specifically, she was in the simulation of Moscow. In truth she was still amazed that a structure as large as a Ringworld was not only possible, but commonplace! And the one around Sol was in the early stages of being converted from a ring to a sphere.

-POV SWITCH: Taleesha T'sayne-

Taleesha was overjoyed at being liberated by the HDI. She had objected quite vocally to the upload procedure for the 1st 4 days but had accepted it by now. She was currently on a 'puny' ship 4 km long to visit her family on Cyone. The trip would take about 6 days, which with her newly accelerated perception of time, would be absolutely agonizing without something to do.

In desperation, she had taken to chatting with a Turian Upload by the name of Consepia Graraka. As it turned out, she had been kidnapped before she had gone through military training. She was therefore very keen on joining the Turian Navy. They were currently playing an old Human board game called Go, which neither was very good at. Consepia was still winning consistently though. Taleesha had only won the last game thanks to some kibitzing from an HDI diplomat on her way to Geth space.

She and Consepia were actually considering finding out if a mind meld worked in the simulation when they were interrupted by a message from the Captain that they had reached Cyone. Sighing, Taleesha exited the recreation simulation and headed to the 'body shop'. She'd gotten a clone body grown that was almost identical to her old one, biotics and all, and was now wearing it as she got in the Asari-made shuttle. It was amazing how much your perception changed after spending time around the HDI. The huge became tiny, the advanced became crude, and the familiar became ancient history.

As the shuttle approached Cyone's surface, Taleesha worried about several things. First, would her family still recognize her as well _her_? Second, was she even the same person as before? She knew for a fact that she wasn't technically an Asari anymore. All of this existential angst came to a single point as the shuttle landed. This point was _am I still me?_

- POV SWITCH: Arifthea T'sayne-

Arifthea watched as the shuttle doors opened, revealing her daughter Taleesha, just into her Matron stage. Something was slightly off though, Taleesha had a genuine smile on her face, but there were clear signs of recent tears. Sensing something was off Arifthea ran up to Taleesha and quickly initiated a Meld. It took a bit of effort to work, as it was almost like her mind and her brain _were separate things_, but eventually Arifthea managed to find the 3 thoughts that told her everything. The memory of her ship being jumped by Batarian slavers, the memory of being liberated by the HDI, and the words _am I still me?_

**Author's Note: **I tried to have this chapter really focus on how a member of a Council race would react to being Uploaded. I hope you liked the OCs, if I get 20 reviews saying you did, I might just keep using these 2.


	5. A New Home

**Author's Note: **Celtic Reaper, Making HK-47 the HDI ambassador to the council _would_ be hilarious. It would also be counterproductive.

Also, I'm writing this story to get better at making stories. In terms of reviews I would like honest critiques of my writing style.

**Chapter 5:** A New Home

Hyd3 watched as the new Ringworld was constructed. It was a relatively small one around a neutron star, but the radiation from it didn't present a threat after 200km of armor was layered on. He was currently having a debate with one of the Quarians, Haator'Finn vas Wulazi to be precise about exactly what the definition of life was. Haator was quite strongly pushing for the end that only Organics counted as life. Hyd3 was objecting to this as he effectively had an organic brain, just one that happened to be running on a computer.

Regardless, the Ringworld was almost done. It was just 2 days from completion. This was despite the fact that mass for it needed to be brought in from neighboring systems, as Neutron Stars weren't suitable for Star Lifting.

1 week later

Riri'Rasul nar Waevum was happy, one day she heard her Father muttering something, and now they had a new planet to live on! As she looked out the camera/screen setup that served as a window, Riri wondered just _where_ they had managed to find a planet shaped like a ring. Still, she wasn't going to dislike it until she'd been on it. As they neared the Ringworld, Riri also found herself wondering what sort of planet had inbuilt docking ports.

1 week later

Council Chamber

Sparatus looked at the HDI ambassador with barely concealed contempt. "Please tell me what you said again," he requested. Ud1N/\ responded with "we gave the Quarians a Ringworld." Tevos, twitching somewhat asked "Why? It was their punishment to roam the galaxy in that fleet of theirs after what they did."You forget that the Geth war happened 300 years ago, there is not a single Quarian alive who participated in that incident," Ud1N/\ responded with a disapproving sigh.

Sparatus then asked a very stupid question "and what does that have to do with anything?" You could almost hear something go _snap_ inside Ud1N/\. "You are punishing someone for something their ancestors did, if your Grandfather stole something (as unlikely as that is) would you consider it fair if you had to serve the jail sentence?" Sparatus answered "well, no." Finally Ud1N/\ ended dthis conversation with "WELL THEN STOP BEING A HYPOCRITE, AND LET US HELP THE QUARIANS!" afterwards, Sparatus wondered just _how_ Ud1N/\ had managed to slam an _automatic door_.

The Quarian Ring

Tali looked around, yes, this wasn't the home world, but it was close enough. They still had yet to import the biosphere from Rannoch, but hopefully that would go well. She had recently talked to one of the HDI who helped build this amazing structure. She was asking him what Uploading felt like. The answer had been somewhat annoying "I can't really describe it to you, there isn't really any feeling to speak of, except a vague sense of time slipping away."

Tali had made up her mind. She was going to upload, hopefully with her father Rael's permission.

Rannoch

Ferth was glad when the ship she was on _finally_ dropped out of warp in the Tikkun system. It was time for her to go to work. She hailed the Geth fleet with an old-fashioned radio transmitter asking for a chance to talk.

-POV SWITCH: GETH CONSENSUS-

The main Geth consensus was, to put it mildly, confused. A ship 4 km long had entered the Tikkun system, and was now transmitting hails. It had no hint of eezo, but was obviously capable of FTL speeds. Its exhaust did not match any known fuel. And finally it was transmitting using an AM radio transmitter.

It eventually managed to translate the signal an entire 15 milliseconds later, revealing it to be a request for biological samples from Rannoch. Somewhat relieved, the Geth consensus started gathering the samples. If someone wanted to do science, why would the Geth ever stop it?

-POV SWITCH: Rael'Zorah vas Rayya-

Rael looked at his daughter in surprise. "Would you please explain to me why you want to Upload?" Tali responded with "Because I want to be useful, and in this society literally _everything_ was built with uploads in mind." Rael gave his opinion "Fine, I'll let you do it, but only because I _know_ you'll go around my back and do it anyway if I say no." Tali perked up at this and said "That's great because I've already taken the nanite injection!" Rael just facepalmed.

**Author's Note: **Truth be told, I wasn't really sure how I was supposed to write Tali (hopefully this version isn't complete garbage). My update schedule will have to slow down to 1 chapter a day from now on, simply because I have a finite amount of time, and I don't want to use it all on one thing (I've got several other projects I'm working on)

In other news, next chapter will timeskip to the events of what _would_ have been the 1st game (expect Sovereign getting instagibbed).


	6. An Unfair Advantage

**Author's Note:** Celtic Reaper, If you want you can PM me with Omakes. I am willing to stick any Omakes anyone feels like making to the end of a chapter as long as they aren't complete garbage. So start sending me your Omakes! Any Omakes containing HK-47 are non-canon of course, but if other ones are good enough I'll mark them with a C for canon.

Oh, the HDI went through _another_ singularity during the timeskip. Now they have access to the _really_ crazy tech.

**Chapter 6:** An Unfair Advantage

-Sovereign POV-

Sovereign exited FTL on the edge of the system that once contained Ilos. It was (if the term was even applicable) furious. It had tried to get here via mass relay, only to find that some upstart civilization had lobbed the relevant relays into the super-massive black hole at the galaxy's core. And thus it had to slog its way here by conventional FTL. This was, to say the least, time consuming.

Sovereign's 'rage' was only magnified when it found that the world known as Ilos no longer existed, having been replaced with a ring around the entire star. In its fury it fired all of its magnetohydrodynamic weapons at the offending mega structure. This turned out to be a bad idea.

-POV SWITCH: Aleth system defense command-

System Commander Shepard was rather amused at the puny little Reaper that had blundered into the Aleth system. A quick tweak of the star's magnetic field and those shots were now doomed to go flying off into interstellar space. He then messaged one of the destroyers in system saying "blow its engines and weapons off, hack it, and find out where the rest of them are hiding." A quick warp jump followed by a shot from a point defense laser took care of the 1st part quite handily.

The hacking _almost_ presented some problems, but come on, captain Hackett was a3rd singularity intelligence a full 3,000 times smarter than an organic, and he had a full team of hackers backing him up! The fact that its code was trying to suborn him was interesting, but they could more or less shut that down instantly, which they did. And now that they had all the cyber-threats taken care of it was time for the fun part. It was time for interrogation.

3 hours later

Finding out that the Reapers had built a Dyson Sphere was rather interesting, but somewhat unimpressive. This was especially the case when they knew it was built around a red dwarf _and,_ more importantly knew where it was. The decision was made almost instantly to follow the age old adage 'there's no kill like overkill' and send a Shipstar to destroy it.

**Codex: Shipstars**

The ultimate expression of the HDI policy of 'bigger is better' a Shipstar is the result of converting an entire solar system into a warship. Its ring has been replaced with a Dyson Sphere with a hole in it. The hole is the system's primary sub-light propulsion and weapon. In propulsion mode it combines star lifting with conversion drive technology to achieve the highest possible specific impulse it's possible to do without cheating (using pseudo-gravity to accelerate something without reaction mass). In weapon mode you simply point the engine at whatever you want dead, since the exhaust is effectively a directional supernova. The only reason Shipstars are even able to turn _at all_ is because their warp drive is modified to be capable of rotating the space the Shipstar is in. On the note of warp drives, Shipstars can (and have) gone to the Andromeda galaxy in a few minutes.

The warp jump only took a few seconds, which made sense. It's not like the Reapers would have bothered putting their _uber sekrit base_more than 20,000 lightyears over the galactic plane. Just a light week out from the Reaper's sphere, the Shipstar Retribution made an engine burn for 20 minutes. With the engine pointed at the Reaper's Dyson Sphere. _That ought to do it_ thought system commander Geoffrey before jumping home.

1 Week later

-POV SWITCH: Reapers-

The Ascended ones were waiting patiently for the Citadel Relay to open so they could begin the harvest. Suddenly, Ascended ones started disappearing from the communications network. The only Ascended to survive were a group of 50, who started a dive towards the galactic plane under conventional FTL. They were going to the Citadel. Admittedly the trip would take about 5 years but they had the time. After that, time was all they had.

-POV SWITCH: the Catalyst-

The Catalyst fumed silently as it _felt_ Ascended ones die. With no clue what to do now it franticly searched for _any_ remaining assets. It then noticed a small group of 50 Ascended flying towards the Citadel. It would have to do.

-POV SWITCH: The Council-

Sparatus just watched, stunned, as the Dyson Sphere was obliterated by a stream of insanely intense light. This was apparently what the HDI were capable of when they got truly pissed. A warship the size of a star system was omnipotent compared to what the council could deploy. And to think that the HDI had achieved this not in spite of the fact that they didn't use eezo for anything besides communications, but _because_ of it.

-POV SWITCH: Javik-

Javik had been aboard the aptly named _retribution_ when it annihilated the Reapers. He had even insisted in staying behind in the 5km long video recorder probe (and pocket warship) to watch as the final shot hit. Finally, he had some closure, the monsters that had murdered his people and who knows how many civilizations before had been completely removed from existence. Well, almost completely. He had noticed a small group of Reapers escape to FTL just before they were annihilated. Their light wake had them going to a rather predictable destination. The Citadel, of course. Javik was having none of that and messaged the Retribution about the group of Reapers and their trajectory. Those monsters would meet a rather instantaneous end in about a year. With that matter settled Javik began the 4 month long trip back to HDI space.

**Author's Note:** DIE REAPERS, DIE! AND STAY DEAD! After this chapter it's mostly going to be watching the Galaxy integrate into glorious Singularity. And Omakes, lots of Omakes. My only condition on the Omakes is that they only get posted if they aren't complete garbage. So send me your reviews, send me your favorites, and SEND ME YOUR OMAKES!


	7. HDI tech archive

**Authors Note: **There's a new forum up for this fic! You can find it here: myforums/EgotisticalIndustries/5836535/

In other news, this chapter is going to mostly be exposition (sorry!)

There was also another time skip to 50 years after the incineration of the Reapers.

**Chapter 7:** HDI technological archive

**Codex:** HDI technology

-CATEGORY: Energy-

Fusion: Relatively comprehensible compared to some of the other things the HDI wound up creating, HDI fusion technology could (and still can for that matter) get energy out of any element lighter than iron. In the modern era this technology is primarily used to produce heavy elements for industrial purposes.

Conversion: The absolute edge of comprehensibility for pre-singularity intelligences, this technology achieves 100% conversion of matter to energy. It is suspected that the tech works by pumping a solid or gas over a catalyst bed made of some sort of exotic matter, but this has never been confirmed.

Infinenergy: To be completely blunt, we have no idea how the ! #$ this works. What is known is that it is capable of producing a continuous stream of energy with an output slightly below conversion without using any sort of fuel whatsoever.

-CATEGORY: Transport-

Conversion drive: This is simply a conversion reactor that vents the energy produced into some reaction mass (usually hydrogen) to provide some extra thrust, which then goes flying into space at a significant fraction of light speed. In total 85% of the mater used by the engine is converted into energy.

Pseudo Gravity drive: This technology is capable of accelerating a spacecraft without any reaction mass being used. It somehow twists space to produce a mono-directional gravitational field around the ship to change its velocity. As a side note, due to the way the drive works, no-one on board the ship experiences any acceleration forces. This also means ships equipped with a Pseudo Gravity drive don't necessarily need to be a single unbroken object.

Warp drive: This FTL drive works by contracting space in front of the ship and expanding it behind. This has the net effect of moving the chunk of space the ship happens to be in at FTL speeds. Similarly to the above the ship in question experiences no acceleration forces. Worth noting is that since the drive changes the ship's position without changing its velocity, a burn with a conversion or pseudo gravity drive is often required after a jump to avoid drifting out of the target star system. We have reverse engineered this technology.

Warp Rotation Technology: Some of the HDI's bigger ships should, by all rights take months to turn around, but they can do so in a few minutes at most. The only logical explanation is that they have managed to create a modified Warp Drive capable of rotating the space the ship in question happens to be in, in addition to simply moving it linearly.

Wormhole Drive: Slowly replacing Warp Drives in the HDI fleet, the wormhole drive creates a traversable wormhole which a ship can move through. We have recently figured out how to create wormholes ourselves, but in our version we have to create both ends of it right next to each other before moving the ends into position. The HDI have somehow made it so that they can create one end of the wormhole right in front of the ship in question, and have the other end of the wormhole show up wherever they want. The HDI have unanimously refused to tell us how they do this.

-CATEGORY: Weaponry-

Phased array X-ray laser: The technology behind phased arrays is well understood by Citadel races, but the HDI are the first species we have ever seen to use them as weapons. The usage of X-rays provides exceedingly long range compared to Citadel GARDIAN arrays. These weapons are quite good by Citadel standards, but the HDI consider them museum pieces, and for good reason.

Conversion Beam: The HDI have yet another use for conversion technology, in this example they just take the radiation from a conversion reactor and do "something with magnets" (quoted directly from an HDI engineer) to make almost all of it go in the same general direction. Worth noting is that despite the fact that the vast majority of the beam's energy is in the gamma ray or X-ray bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, enough of it is in the visible spectrum that organics are able to see the beam due to diffraction.

Warp Guns: In an unexpected application of Warp Drive technology the HDI have taken to shooting warp fields as bullets. The resulting weapon produces ridiculous amounts of blue-red shift in flight and has a nasty tendency to remove a large quantity of matter from existence entirely. Worth noting is that it doesn't just rip straight through anything in its way with no resistance, as enough matter accumulating in the front of a Warp field leads to it violently collapsing in a manner capable of utterly annihilating anything in a specific radius (determined by the speed and size of the warp field in question). It has been confirmed that a Warp Field 1 centimeter in diameter travelling at 100c has a yield of roughly 50 megatons. We have managed to create an equivalent weapon that works by firing both ends of a wormhole at the target at 0.7c.

-CATEGORY: Defenses-

Exmat Composite Armor: This insanely durable armor is confirmed as a composite material of synthetic diamond (similarly to Silaris armor), The exotic matter cables used to keep their ring-worlds together, and a super-dense substance they refuse to call anything besides Structural Material 83. The super-dense material is strongly suspected to be neutronium in layers only as thick as a single neutron. How they manage to keep the neutronium from disintegrating is beyond us. This armor's insane durability is only compounded by the fact that they like to put on quite bluntly insane quantities of armor.

Reverse Event Horizon Shields: This is another unexpected development of warp (or possibly Pseudo Gravity) technology created in response to our wormhole guns. It works by creating an extremely strong gravitational field away from the ship deploying it. The net effect is that to get anywhere near the target whatever you're firing at them needs to be travelling at least 500c. The only weapon confirmed to be able to penetrate this is a warp gun (and our own prototypes haven't managed to get a shot to go over 20c). The shield has a major disadvantage in that it doesn't just block hostile fire from reaching the ship, it prevents anything from reaching the ship. The HDI get around this by creating several thousand small wormholes within 1 light minute of the ship itself and sticking sensor masts through them.

-CATEGORY: Mega structures and civil engineering-

Orbitals: Ostensibly the brainchild of a long dead science fiction writer called Ian M. Banks, an Orbital is a miniature Ringworld. It orbits its star like a planet, using centrifugal gravity to provide 10 m/s/s of downward acceleration for the inhabitants. It's rotation also occurs once every day. The ones the HDI have gifted to us are what they call 'open roof' designs, meaning the atmosphere is kept in by nothing but spinning and 500 km tall walls. The HDI don't actually use these, preferring Ring-worlds or Dyson Spheres.

Ring-worlds: These consist of a ring around an entire star (usually in the habitable band). The ones the HDI have given us are again 'open roof' designs. The most heavily populated ring-world owned by a race that was ever a Citadel Race is the Quarian Ring known as New Rannoch, though they have technically joined the HDI power bloc. New Rannoch is also unique for being a 'closed roof' design, which is necessary as it is around a neutron star. 'Closed Roof' designs are the primary type used by HDI, with the core of the ring being their trademark hyper-computing substrate buried under 200 km of Exmat Composite Armor (and, more recently, Reverse Event Horizon Shields). HDI rings are confirmed as also being gigantic warp drives capable of moving the entire system.

Dyson Spheres: Something of a misnomer, a normal Dyson sphere is more of a Dyson cloud. A Dyson cloud is simply a bunch of huge solar panels/power transmitters orbiting a star and capturing the vast majority of its energy for later use. The exception to this is a Shipstar, which has a solid shell, but that shell is only about 50 km thick away from the Ring that the Shipstar was built from. Worth noting is that a Shipstar can lose up to 30% of its shell area without any appreciable decline in functionality, but it can be rendered nonfunctional by destroying 10% of its ring.

Star Lifting: Star Lifting technology works by using magnetic fields to "squeeze" a star. The result is large amounts of stellar material flying off in the places where you don't squeeze. There is a secondary method, which isn't used very much in which a star's rotation is greatly accelerated, leading to a 'disc' of plasma spinning off the star's equator into space.

Entropy Delay Initiative: The entropy delay initiative is a plan in which a system's star is completely dismantled. The resulting mass is placed in 'storage gas giants' 50,000 km in diameter for later use. The star is replaced with a massive infinenergy reactor designed to produce the exact same amount of light as the star it replaces, though unlike a star, it will light up the night forever. The HDI have initiated this plan for all systems that they own (Shipstars included).

-CATEGORY: Medical tech-

Uploading: THE defining thing that makes an HDI instead of a human is that their brain has been entirely converted into information. This has a number of benefits including a greatly quickened sense of time, immortality, and jumping in and out of various bodies whenever they feel like it. An Upload can be copied, but this is frowned upon as it usually leads to the copy getting, as a pre-singularity human would have said "screwed over".

Organ Printing: For those living in HDI space who don't want to Upload for whatever reason, whenever an organ is damaged beyond repair they can take a sample of the patient's stem cells, put the patient in stasis for a while, and grow a new (insert organ here) for the patient to receive surgically.

Telomere extension treatment: Those who haven't Uploaded their lifespan can be extended greatly by using a specific biochemical substance called telomerase (or its equivalent for the species in question). This substance is used to stave off genetic corruption from cell division, thus keeping them away from the 'death shift' (the point at which an individual's cell death rate becomes greater than their cell division rate). The Salarian Union technically 'stole' this technology, but the HDI response to this was best summed up as 'dude, if you'd asked we would have given it to you'.

**Author's Note: **Sorry about the delay, I got roped in to doing some lawnmowing. I promise that there will eventually be some meaningful conflict, just not vs. reapers. (OTHER KARDASHEV CIV IS PISSED OFF AT YOU!)


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